Vince Staples Knows What's Wrong With Hip-Hop

Vince Staples, the Long Beach-raised rapper who broke out with 2015's vivid Summertime '06, is a communicator, a translator, a plain-spoken narrator speaking in pointed realist rhymes to the underbelly and cold realities of life for a young black man in America: the gang life he experienced as a Crip, the inequality he sees on the streets, the mistreatment of young black men at the hands of law enforcement.

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"Sometimes I wonder who the activist and who the devil's advocate / But do it matter?" the 23-year-old raps on "War Ready," the seething, powerful lead track on his new Prima Donna EP, out Aug. 26. But speak to Staples and the straight-A student who only got into music to support his family comes sharply into focus. Staples is a storyteller translating what he hears in his head into song.

"There's no overthinking it," Staples said of his creative process. "There's no moment where I'm like 'I want to speak on oppression, I want to speak on diversity.' I just say how I feel." His latest work, with sole production work from No I.D., DJ Dahi, and James Blake, is arguably his darkest yet.

And yet topics an outsider might view as depressing—racial stereotyping ("Smile") or systematic incarceration of black men ("Pimp Hand")—Staples sees as a matter of opinion. "I don't see my music as dark," he told Esquire this week, during a conversation that touched on rappers needing to raise their artistic expectations, his no-nonsense work ethic, and suburban dreams. "I've heard that before though to be honest. I just don't see it that way. I dunno. Maybe I'm crazy."

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Prima Donna delves into some pretty depressing topics. But in conversation you seem like a pretty even-keeled dude.

I think it's like that for everybody, though. I don't think you can really control that. People are always gonna have their opinions, and that's the point of music. To have an interpretation. You know what I mean? I actually think artists do a bit too much of trying to tell people who we are and not letting them come to their own grips or terms with it. We should just let people have their own opinions.

James W Mataitis Bailey

Some of your most affecting tracks—"Lift Me Up" off Summertime '06—deal with timely and tough social issues. And yet you seem reluctant when people look to you to discuss these topics or think you'll have the answers.

I don't really try to tackle issues at all. I just say how I feel and what's going on in my head. Really, whatever pops into my head usually goes into the song. It's not really as thought-out as people might think.

Why then do you think people often come to you more than other artists for your read on matters of social and societal importance?

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Well, I think first off you should be proud that people look towards you about things that they don't understand. But I really don't think I'm opinionated at all. I mind my business. People ask me these questions because they want to get sound bites. People are gonna be like, "How do you feel about this?" and they're going to put it on a video and they say, "People will think you're funny. Tell a joke!" It's all good though. It is what it is.

There's a strong narrative thread throughout Prima Donna: each song is positioned around audio snippets of a young, seemingly depressed man coping with his rough circumstances. It even appears the project starts with that young man killing himself or being killed.

It's all about perception. I'm a big believer of people coming to terms with how they feel about something on their own. I let people have their own opinions. I think that's the most important part of music. It's all about what you see it as. If I see something different then you you're not necessarily wrong; we're just taking it with our own interpretation. That's the thing I hate the most about music, especially rap music: Rap fans consist for the most part of—and especially now with the Internet—people arguing about who has a more valid opinion.

Speaking of the hip-hop scene, you've talked often about how you didn't get into making rap music to live the glamorous life often depicted by the media and flaunted by rappers themselves. Naturally though, on a base level isn't it unavoidable for many to simply view you through the prism of being "Vince Staples is a rapper" and not look beyond the surface?

I don't think I'm associated with it.

Mainstream rap culture?

I don't even know what mainstream rap culture is. Do we look at Taylor Swift like she's U2? Do we look at Justin Bieber like he's Justin Timberlake? Do we look at Frank Ocean like he's Usher? No. I understand it, though. Being honest, a lot of it is because more artists should put more into their work and more into their craft and care more about it. At this point, it seems like people are just doing it for the most part to get money. Everything is based around money or attention or posturing yourself to be the richest. There's no working-class rapper. There's no rapper that's struggling or trying to grow and makes music. Every rapper—it's like if you not rich or if you not overly successful as a rapper, you're a failure.

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Do you then look as making music as strictly a job?

Yup. Definitely. That's 100 percent how I look at it. I'm just here for other people. I don't look at it like it's free. I'm not just taking care of myself. I've got other people. I'm able to make songs and then I can be OK. It's a privilege.

We need to start treating our artists more like artists.

Not enough artists understand that. Seeing it as a job, how then do you look at performing? Especially at massive, rowdy festivals which you've been playing of late.

It's a show. It's your job. The people there have a right to have a good time. So it just makes you want to perform. It's not about you. It's about you doing the best you can possibly do for them. That's how I look at it. Also though, we have to raise the value of a show within hip-hop. It's not always about "Turn Up!" We're all creative people. Look at like a Drake show or a Chance the Rapper show or a A$AP Rocky show or a Tyler, The Creator show. There's such a production within those shows, and I feel like more of us should get into that. It's all about entertainment. I used to feel when I was younger that if people weren't jumping around or going crazy at a show they weren't having a good time. That's not true.

You've mentioned how your greatest aspiration is to want to have a nice house in a middle-class suburban neighborhood. Nothing more.

I think most people want that in their life. But if a rapper came out and said, "I don't have that much money, and I really just want this or that," then we would make fun of him on the Internet. It all depends on how we treat our artists. We're in a time where all we seem to really care about is the drug dealers and the rich guys and the gangsters. We don't care about the conscious smart people. It's just too much of the same. We need to start treating our artists more like artists.